Our guide to the best British pubs. This week: The Royal Oak (Th’ Heights),
Delph, Greater Manchester.

A first visit to the Royal Oak requires some preplanning. Although the address is Delph, the pub isn’t in the village, but as its alternative name, “Th’ Heights”, suggests, sits on a high spur overlooking the valley. You have to navigate a complicated series of perilously narrow potholed country lanes, stitched in by crumbling stone walls, to climb the hill. There are meditative ruminant sheep in the straggly fields. You may catch sight of a llama. This is not a mirage brought about by a terrible thirst – there’s a llama-trekking farm hereabouts.

Take a careful look at the pub’s opening hours. Ring up and check if you are worried. It closes on Mondays and opens only in the evenings for the rest of the week, apart from Sunday, when you can join the lunchtime clientele.

Th’ Heights stands next to an abandoned church with a spooky graveyard, a spot much appreciated by film and television location managers looking for melodramatic backgrounds with spectacular views. St Thomas’ Church opened for business in 1765, but was deconsecrated in the Seventies. The Royal Oak, then known as the Punch Bowl, was first mentioned in 1771 and is still going strong.

Once inside, there are three small rooms, each with a roaring fire. If you can squeeze in among the regulars, the centre one is best, because it looks directly at the bar, a theatre with glasses and brasses winking in the light, and it provides the best entertainment – affable chat of this and that.

Mike and Sheila Fancy have been running the pub and their adjacent farm for a long time. They have been in Camra’s Good Beer Guide for the last consecutive 20 years, so they know their stuff. Today, they have Black Sheep Bitter, Millstone Tiger Rut and something new to me, Dark and Divine, from the Hornbeam Brewery in Denton, Manchester. Sheila thinks we should try this one: “It isn’t really dark. More a coppery colour, but it does have a nice sharp bite to it.” She is absolutely right.

A chalkboard announces a tempting menu, available on Friday and Saturday nights only. A lot of the meat – lamb, mutton, pork and assorted poultry – comes from their own farm, and the evening’s fare depends on what’s available.

On the way out, we buy a box of eggs. You can choose brown or white and here’s a lovely thing – whichever colour you pick, the eggs are an anarchic awkward squad of totally different sizes. Nothing like those disciplined, identical supermarket ones. Very satisfying that, somehow.